The workshop hums.

Not with life—machines don't live—but with something deeper, something primal. The air vibrates with the persistent whirr of the ancient ventilation system, its fan blades grinding against time as it battles the dense fumes of oil and solder. Somewhere overhead, the fluorescent light flickers erratically, buzzing like an insect caught in a web. The tick-tick-tick of cooling metal punctuates the silence, each sound a reminder of her oversight—the soldering iron she'd forgotten to turn off three hours ago. Beneath it all, a pipe leaks steadily, its rhythmic drip-drip-drip merging with the tap-tap of her boot against the concrete floor.

Katharina Vogel exists in this symphony of industrial decay like a specter tethered to her domain. Her spine presses against the cold steel of the workbench, her body half-slumped in a posture that speaks of exhaustion but refuses surrender. She stares upward at the ceiling, her gaze unfocused yet sharp, as if dissecting the very fabric of reality above her. A hand rises slowly, grease-streaked fingers splaying against the flickering light as though measuring its luminescence by instinct alone.

"Forty-seven minutes," she announces into the void, her voice low and rasping from hours of silence.

The transmission mock-up sprawls across the table before her like a gutted beast, its innards exposed in jagged metal petals. It mocks her with its incompleteness, daring her to solve its riddle. She'd promised it would be done by 1900 hours. The calculations had been clear this morning: 87% efficiency was possible with adjusted gear ratios and recalibrated tolerances. But now those same numbers swirl in her mind like smoke from a dying engine, intangible and suffocating.

Click.

Her teeth clamp down on the inside of her cheek with just enough force to draw blood. The metallic tang blooms on her tongue—a sharp contrast to the bitter aftertaste of cold coffee lingering at the back of her throat. She doesn't flinch; pain is just another variable in an equation she's long since learned to solve.

A vibration cuts through the mechanical symphony—a low rumble that she feels more than hears. It travels through the steel frame of the workbench and into her bones, distinct from the shop's usual staccato rhythms. Her phone screen lights up, casting jagged shadows across blueprints stained with oil and sweat.

She doesn't reach for it immediately. Instead, her fingers trace a familiar path along her jawline, finding the scar that runs from just below her ear to the corner of her chin. It's an old wound—long healed but never forgotten—and touching it has become an unconscious ritual when she needs to think. The workshop smells of solvent and stale coffee, but beneath those layers lingers something more permanent: diesel. It clings to her skin like a second shadow, no matter how many times she scrubs it away.

Buzz.

"Scheiße," she mutters under her breath, softer than intended but no less weighted.

Her gloved fingers swipe across the phone screen, leaving a streak of grease over the caller ID. She doesn't speak first; she never does. Silence stretches between her and whoever waits on the other end—a silence heavy enough to make most people squirm but not Katharina. She's made peace with silence; it's an old companion.

"Ja," she says finally, breaking it with a single syllable.

The response is inaudible from this side of the line, but Katharina doesn't need to hear it clearly to know what's being said. Her thumb absently rubs at a fleck of dried grease on the edge of the workbench as she listens.

"Nein," she says after a pause, her voice firm but devoid of malice. "The Buchholz relay can wait."

Another pause follows—longer this time—and Katharina feels a tension coil in her shoulders like a spring wound too tightly.

"Twenty minutes," she lies before ending the call with a sharp tap on the screen.

The workshop exhales around her as though relieved by her decision to leave it behind for now. She stands slowly, stretching muscles stiffened by hours spent hunched over machinery and equations that refuse to yield their secrets. The transmission mock-up remains unfinished on the table—a silent accusation—but she ignores it for tonight.